With competitors like the Dell Latitude, HP Probook, and Lenovo Thinkpad the mid-range notebook section already is pretty congested and hardly contested. Then came the TravelMate P4 series from Acer who, honestly speaking, is not very popular for producing the best business notebooks. Let’s check out then whether or not it was able to live up to its name.
Check out the latest price for the Acer TravelMate TMP459-G2-M
Specs:
- CPU – Intel Core i5 Dual-Core (7th Gen), 2.5 GHz
- GPU – Intel HD Graphics 620
- Memory – 8 GB DDR4
- Screen – 15.6-inch HD (1,366 x 768)
- Storage – 256 GB SSD
- OS – Windows 10 Home edition
Benefits:
- Performance – It’s equipped pretty adequately for your general needs. An Intel Core i5 processor, 8 gigs of RAM and 256 GB of SSD- it employs almost everything that you might ever need. The SSD is a big bonus as very few mid-range laptops provide this. If it isn’t anything very demanding you can stay assured that it would handle it with ease (and it includes a slight bit of gaming as well).
- Ports – You surely get a handful of ports with this notebook. You get a total of 5 USB ports including 3 USB 2.0 ports (slow as hell), 1 USB 3.0 port (much faster) and a USB type-C port (which can also act as a display port) along with an Ethernet port, an SD card reader and a separate HDMI port.
- Battery – It is equipped with a 4-cell 48 Wh battery. While we can’t say that the battery backup is out of the world (at least in comparison with the Dell Latitude which boasts of a 68 Wh battery!!) it is adequate for a 15-inch notebook. It stayed up for nearly 7 to 7 and half hour before going dead under continuous web surfing. You might be able to stretch it even more than 8 hours if you employ it for some less demanding tasks.
Downsides:
- Display – It is shipped with a 15.6 inch “HD” panel. The first thing you’d notice is that as stated it’s merely an HD display (1366×768) which might be suitable for an 11-inch sub £300 netbook but for a general purpose notebook it’s simply a massive weakness. On top of that, the display brightness is less than average at only 245 nits making it highly inefficient for working in a well-lit environment like outdoors. But the colour coverage (while still lower than the average with sRGB coverage at 60%) is at least as much as we can expect from such a notebook.
- Price – Now I do really think that for what it’s offering it’s a bit pricey. The biggest flaw is certainly the prementioned display. Both of the competitors like HP ProBook 440 G5 ($800~£566) and Lenovo Thinkpad E470 ($850~£600) are somewhat cheaper than the TravelMate.
Verdict:
It’s a good mid-ranged notebook suitable for getting done your everyday chores as well as official stuff. But the poor HD display is a big bummer. And on top of that, it’s somewhat expensive. But on the positive side, it’s lightweight and has got a backlit keyboard (big plus). Acer TravelMate TMP459-G2-M (NX.VEWEK.004) is certainly an option worth checking out.